The Last Man (1826)

I'd been looking forward to reading this for a very long time. Now I can honestly say I have read it. Delighted to have done so? Not so much.

Very, VERY verbose and I couldn't help thinking through much of it, WHY is she going into so much detail over this? I was waiting for the part of the book wherein the focus would be on THE LAST MAN, it didn't happen until the absolute end of the book and in my opinion was fairly anti-climactic. I wasn't expecting big action, and I was not disppointed.

I think there's a reason why she's best known for Frankenstein. This story is set in 2090s with no thought to what mankind might have achieved by then. There were a couple of mentions of traveling in a balloon which I rather liked, but the chief method of conveyance was still horses and horse drawn carriages. The world hadn't changed at all from the times in which it was written and this caused me to feel let down, but I'd have forgiven it all if there'd been more depth of FEELING from or toward the characters. In my opinion this is a rather cold, dry book. ( )

I'd been looking forward to reading this for a very long time. Now I can honestly say I have read it. Delighted to have done so? Not so much.

Very, VERY verbose and I couldn't help thinking through much of it, WHY is she going into so much detail over this? I was waiting for the part of the book wherein the focus would be on THE LAST MAN, it didn't happen until the absolute end of the book and in my opinion was fairly anti-climactic. I wasn't expecting big action, and I was not disppointed.

I think there's a reason why she's best known for Frankenstein. This story is set in 2090s with no thought to what mankind might have achieved by then. There were a couple of mentions of traveling in a balloon which I rather liked, but the chief method of conveyance was still horses and horse drawn carriages. The world hadn't changed at all from the times in which it was written and this caused me to feel let down, but I'd have forgiven it all if there'd been more depth of FEELING from or toward the characters. In my opinion this is a rather cold, dry book. ( )

Shelley needed an editor on this puppy. She had one on Frankenstein - Percy Bysshe Shelley - but he added 5,000 words to it, and (I hear) some of the more florid passages. Maybe she thought those worked, so she should write more. (Much of The Last Man is very, very florid indeed.) Or maybe she just figured, with the success of Frankenstein - it was very successful - she could - or must - write more this time. Or maybe she was just getting into character: toward the end of the book, Verney explains that as he was trying to write this last testament, he meant to focus only on the plague but was caught up by reminiscence in his loneliness. That's totally legit; if I was the last man, my last book would be super fucking boring. I would write everything. Shit would be like Infinite Jest.

It would have an awesome plot, as this does, because being the last man, I automatically get a great story that dudes would read whenever the next apes took to reading. But it would kinda suck, and this book kinda sucks. ( )

Notes on THE LAST MAN, by Mary Shelley
January 18, 2013

After Shelley’s tale of the manmade monster of FRANKENSTEIN and not long after the death by drowning of her husband, poet Percy Byshe Shelley and her return to England from Italy, she wrote, beginning in 1824, THE LAST MAN. It is a beautifully written and carefully and lovingly crafted story of the end of mankind. There is much I admire here. Shelley has set it in, what for her, was the future: 2072 until 3000. In 1824, Shelley’s work would reflect the fully felt impact of the Industrial Revolution, but her vision of life in the 21st century would still be severely limited by the absence of flight, high tech engineering and the digital age. Although travel by air balloon is possible, life is not all that different from the 19th century. This in no way inhibits the tale, human nature being timeless, and the future age is marked by political change and the end of the monarchy.

This is not about what the future will look like, and the world created doesn't bear close scrutiny for realism. What Shelley has done so richly is explore the big questions, what would become important to us if we were to lose the world, society, community, family and friends we've always known until we are left entirely alone in the whole world. At the outset, there already has been a big adjustment and that is the ending of the monarchy in England. A distant war is nothing new, but it is at the site of the war that the plague is born. It spreads gradually across the globe, gaining its power in warmer climes. Eventually it makes its way to England where each summer it rises up again to decimate the populace.

The novel is structured in three parts. The first part introduces Lionel Kersey, the son of a charming lover of the high life and hanger-on of royalty. Kersey's father becomes a close friend of the last King of England but eventually loses his standing with the aristocracy when his gambling and spending leave him broke. He has deserted his family and Kersey and his sister, Perdita, grow up orphans after the death of their mother. Kersey grows up a wild sheep herder until the son of the late king, Adrian, returns to Cumbria where Kersey lives. They become friends and Adrian sets about to make up for the late king's abandonment of Kersey's father. He takes Kersey under his wing and introduces him to education and philosophy. Kersey and his sister become gentlefolk.

In the second part, there is the greater development of two other important characters, Lord Raymond and Idris. Idris is Adrian's sister. The main development is that of the war between Turkey and Greece out of which comes the devastating Plague. Finally, in part three, the world of humanity falls under the progressive power of the Plague.

Throughout, The Last Man paints a descriptive and rich picture of the core nature of human society, its priorities, characteristics, relationship to nature and weaknesses. It is a deeply satisfying example of writing of the Romantic Period with its poetic language, focus on the natural world and examination of all that separates Man from the animal world and binds him to his fellow man. ( )

Looking at my review of Shelley's Frankenstein, I noted I had written that the "flowery, melodramatic style sometimes made me roll my eyes." But I also remember by and large enjoying that book, and being impressed by the play of ideas and imagination. Enough I had wanted to read this other book by Shelley, the other one that could also be called science fiction (her other works of fiction mainly being historical fiction.) After all, Mary Shelley is often hailed as the mother of science fiction, or maybe the grandmother, with Jules Verne and H.G. Wells as the proud papas. And here is this tale of the end of the world, or of humanity at least due to a pandemic, set centuries after her time (though in our current century.) I thought it suggestive that the great work of Olaf Stapledon, Last and First Men, (which I have yet to read, but is considered one of the great and influential science fiction works) had a similar title. Well, this was wretched. I doubt it had much influence on later science fiction or post-apocalyptic works. Apparently the idea of "the last man" or "lastness" had been common in the decades before publication and was nothing new. The Last Man was badly received when published in 1826 and went out of print for more than a century. Sometimes even bad books are worth reading for the influence they've had on culture, literature or history. Unlike the case with Frankenstein, I doubt that's the case here.

Intrinsic value? Oh dear God, I don't even know where to begin detailing the problems with this novel and how much I lament that trees died in its name. First, the very first rule of fiction is, "show, don't tell." The tell in this novel is mammoth. You know how you can tell? Flipping through pages you'll see little dialogue. In the midst of reading this I dipped into Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice (1813) to remind myself that yes, they did already know how to write novels back then and there it was when I glanced down on the page--lively, plausible, complex characterizations, witty dialogue, wise and insightful comments about human nature--well integrated into the narrative--and restrained emotion. Mary Shelley on the other hand has the most emo characters I've ever read--even by the standards of the at times overwrought Frankenstein. I never thought of Brits as a weepy people, not even in the romantic era but Good God. And the exclamation points, the capitalizations, the classical metaphors, the archaic language, the frequent quotation of poetry. Let's have a short sample:

In the deepest fountain of my heart the pulses were stirred; around, above, beneath, the clinging Memory as a cloak enwrapt me. In no one moment of coming time did I feel as I had done in time gone by. The spirit of Idris hovered in the air I breathed; her eyes were ever and for ever bent on mine; her remembered smile blinded my faint gaze, and caused me to walk as one, not in eclipse, not in darkness and vacancy--but in a new and brilliant light, too novel, too dazzling for my human senses. On every leaf, on every small division of the universe (as on the hyacinth ac is engraved) was imprinted the talisman of my existence--SHE LIVES! SHE IS!

That was chosen from a random page--most of it is... well worse. And though this is set over 250 years in the future, at the end of the 21st century, there is no imaginative speculation about the future on display here. There are balloons for fast travel--an invention from the century before the book was published. And Britain is a republic with an elected Lord Protector. That's it. Otherwise this is a decidedly pre-industrial setting with no discernible social differences from the time the novel was written. Never mind cars or trains, this is a world still connected by horse and sail. It might be said that it was easier for Verne and Wells writing in the midst of the Industrial Revolution to imagine voyages through time and under the sea and into space. Maybe so, but I did expect better from the author of Frankenstein.

The book does have one redeeming quality that kept me somewhat interested, especially through the first third. Both the back cover of the book and the introduction reveals this is somewhat a roman-a-clef. Volume 1, the first third of the novel, is basically a domestic drama--no apocalypse in sight--but I did find there the dynamics of the characters interesting in a voyeuristic sense. Mary Shelley wasn't just the author of Frankenstein. She was the wife of Percy Bysshe Shelley, one of the great English Romantic Poets, and they were close to another of the great English poets--Lord Byron. Supposedly the character of Adrian is based on Percy Bysshe Shelley and Lord Raymond is a portrait of Lord Byron. (If true-to-life then Bryon was a prime jerk.) If you have the Oxford edition, I don't recommend reading the introduction before the main text, since it gives away the entire plot--but what it did detail of Mary Shelley's life and circle did have some fascinating parallels in the book. The few times I felt moved by the book was when I felt I could read on the page how Mary Shelley must herself have felt like the last human on the earth after the death of so many she had held dear not long before she wrote the novel. The isolation at the end of the novel and hint of hope really is well done. In fact, the last chapter was great--it just came 450 pages too late. So if you're fascinated by these literary figures, you might find (well, some of) this book of interest: otherwise, I'd leave this novel to the academics. ( )